Seventy per cent of institutional investors in North America and Europe recommend that a Latin American company pursue an initial public offering in today’s capital markets, according to a survey released by JP Morgan’s depositary receipts (DR) business. Survey participants, who were interviewed in September 2012, believe that despite significant macroeconomic headwinds in Europe and China, Latin America is a region with steadfast domestic markets and attractively-valued companies that demonstrate significant growth potential.   “Each year we survey North American and European institutional investors, with the aim of helping our Latin American clients better understand investor sentiment toward companies in

PARTNERS+simons, a brand communications company specialising in the healthcare and financial services industries, has secured an investment from Baird Capital Partners. The investment by Baird Capital Partners will enable PARTNERS+simons to expand on its services as the changing landscape in both healthcare and financial services remain prominent on the national agenda. The company plans to build or acquire additional capabilities in public relations, direct-to-consumer marketing, data-driven analytics and CRM, social media, mobile and tablet applications, and patient engagement. “There is enormous opportunity to develop even more comprehensive, cross-channel communications models for our clients, and this partnership with Baird Capital Partners

Babson Capital Management has provided a combination of senior debt and subordinated debt and equity to support River Capital’s purchase of Blue Wave Products. Babson Capital served as the sole provider of senior and subordinated debt on the transaction. Illinois-based Blue Wave is a distributor of above-ground swimming pools, pool accessories and other products to internet dealers and the internet channels of large national retailers. Blue Wave serves as a one-stop shop offering more than 6,000 wholesale recreational products including pools, automatic cleaners, steps and ladders, winter products, games and saunas. “As a reliable partner on eight portfolio investments spanning

ChemDesign Products, a portfolio company of The Resilience Fund II, has been acquired by Lubar, a Milwaukee-based private investment firm.  ChemDesign is a provider of custom toll manufacturing services to the global chemical industry. The company has developed a strong reputation for partnering with its blue-chip customers, using its technical personnel, flexible manufacturing facilities and process optimisation capabilities to produce highly complex chemicals. The sale of ChemDesign generated a 3.8x net return on invested capital and a 25.9 per cent net internal rate of return. "Our investment in ChemDesign is a great case study in corporate renewal.  Through hard work,

Diana, the French food manufacturer backed by AXA Private Equity, has acquired Givaudan’s vegetables, wines and vinegars extracts range. This is Diana’s fourth transaction since June and reflects the company’s ambitious growth strategy. AXA Private Equity has also set up a EUR50m “payment-in-kind” tranche, financed by JP Morgan Mezzanine and Mezzvest, to help finance this and other planned future acquisitions.   The acquisition of the assets from Givaudan follows Diana’s recent purchase of US food manufacturer Pacific Pure Aid and also French mushrooms’ extract specialist Arômes de Chacé. Diana has also recently created Ecuaprotein, a new AquaSea site in Ecuador,

Northzone has acquired an additional 11 per cent of Trustpilot, a provider of retailer reviews, from the Danish governmental seed investment vehicle DTU Symbion Innovation. This brings Northzone’s holding in Trustpilot close to 35 per cent post transaction, making it one of the two largest investors in the company. Founded in Copenhagen, Trustpilot has experienced growth in many major markets including the US, UK, Germany, Italy and France. Trustpilot has more than six million reviews of 100,000 merchants available on the site and the number of reviews grows rapidly with the community of active reviewers expanding globally. “We want to

Investcorp has completed the sale of FleetPride, North America’s largest truck and trailer parts distributor, to TPG, one of the largest private equity investment firms globally, for more than USD1bn. Steve Puccinelli, managing director at Investcorp and head of corporate investment for North America and Europe, says: “FleetPride represents the type of core, mid-market corporate investment that we typically target in the US. We worked closely with FleetPride’s management team from a very early stage in our investment to successfully implement strategic growth plans, thereby enhancing the company’s operations. The success of the FleetPride investment is a testament to our

Arkadin, the global collaboration services provider, has acquired Novasight, a company founded and managed by Philippe Decaesteke specialising in video conferencing services. Through this acquisition, Arkadin will reinforce its video conferencing offer (from the video-as-a-service to managed services) while boosting its development to Unified Communications, solutions which gather all the communication tools within a single interface. Novasight will be able to use Arkadin’s global network to accelerate its own growth. Arkadin will also be able to offer its 25,000 B2B clients the knowledge and expertise of Novasight’s teams and technological partnerships, which the company has built since its creation in

Wind energy specialist Gamesa has sold a wind project in France with installed capacity of 8 MW to Impax New Energy Investors II (NEF II), an investment fund managed by London-based Impax Asset Management, via its portfolio company, Epuron France. La Souterraine wind project in the Limousin region of France will be equipped with four Gamesa G97, 2.0MW turbines.  The construction of the project, which was developed and will be built by Gamesa, will start by the end of the year. Joe Berry, investment director in Impax’s private equity infrastructure team, says: “We are delighted to sign our first Gamesa